Nearly half of small business users accessing work email use iPhone

A look at the email use of a quarter million business email users indicates that 48.5 percent of small business users who access email from their smartphone now use an iPhone.

The results were compiled by Intermedia, the world's largest provider of hosted Microsoft Exchange email accounts. The firm says its customers are primarily small and mid sized businesses, and reports that half of its subscribers now use smartphones to access their accounts.

Intermedia's chief executive Jonathan McCormick said that "staying in sync with the office regardless of time or day has become imperative in most industries. But securely supporting the different smartphone options can drain an in-house IT managers resources. With our hosted Exchange service, employees can choose the smartphone option that makes the most sense for their business and personal needs from BlackBerry, to Droid to iPhone without creating complexity for the IT department."

Nearly half (48.5 percent) of the company's customers who use a mobile device to access their work email are using iPhones. Another 25 percent use BlackBerry phones, while 12.75 percent use Android-based devices and 13.75 percent use other mobile platforms, including Microsoft's own Windows Mobile or Windows Phone 7.

The company also noted that iPhone users send more emails per user on average, while Android users receive more emails on a per user basis.

Both Exchange servers and iPhone are using an old approach to E-mail, one pioneered by Palm and Symbian. It's not surprising that if you look on Exchange servers, you'll see a lot of iPhone users. If you look on Google servers, it's the other way around.

Iphone is great for email well, as long as you are reading or forwarding more than writing. Its missing some useful features though, such as sending or forwarding to groups easily from within the Mail app.

I guess some would say its a disadvantage to be able to read email at all times, especially if you have a lot of international clients, it certainly keeps me up at nights sometimes.